


an ember in the rafters

by addandsubtract



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Dom/sub, F/M, Future Fic, Mirrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:17:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are months leading up to it, where Levi swings by her squad and casually corrects her form.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an ember in the rafters

**Author's Note:**

> written for the _mirrors/doubles_ square on my kink_bingo card. title from sea wolf's _wicked blood_.

There are months leading up to it, where Levi swings by her squad and casually corrects her form. She listens to him at least in part because he’s her superior and she’s a good soldier, but also because however much she hates him, she’s seen him fight, too. He can tell she still thinks of him as fists pummeling her brother’s face, as the one who drew blood, but that doesn’t matter to him. There’s power in her stance, brutal strength in her heart, and they will need her.

It’s been a long time since he’s wanted anyone in this way. Longer still since he’s wanted a woman at all.

There are months where they lose soldiers and more soldiers, most of them not yet twenty, but Mikasa isn’t among the dead. Neither is her brother. Levi is used to dread in the way only a career soldier can be, though he can’t imagine the years of crime didn’t leave their mark, either. He deals with it the way that he always has.

The first day she comes into his quarters he’s cleaning. He watches the way her eyes flick over the room – the mirror on the wall, neatly covered with a hanging sheet, the huge four-postered bed. The chest of drawers underneath the window, mostly empty. Levi is on his hands and knees, scrubbing the worn stones. The grout is still stained faintly green with moss, and the room smells like lemon soap. She’s at attention in the doorway, but her expression is familiar in a way that makes heat curl in Levi’s gut, makes his lip curl with it.

“Ackerman, what are you doing here?”

“I still hate you,” she says, as if continuing a conversation. She’s looking at him like he’s an ant to be crushed underneath the heel of her boot. Ground into dust and twitching, severed limbs. Levi wants to shiver at that look, but he has better control, and so he doesn’t.

“I know,” he says, and sits back on his heels. He drops the coarse brush into the bucket of soapy water next to him, and makes to stand. “Did you have a point, or –”

“Don’t,” she says. One word, firm, and he stills all over. Despite everything he is now, despite where he’s crawled from to get here, despite her youth and her hatred, he goes still. “Don’t stand.”

Silence, for a long moment. She’s cocked her head to side, contemplating him, and he knows by now that the core of her being is protecting the things that she loves. It’s getting there, earning that trust, that few people ever manage.

She’s wearing her gear, ready for battle. He’s in a pair of loose slacks and a button-down he stole from Erwin the first month of their acquaintance. Despite the power difference inherent in their ranks, they are not on even ground. She chose her moment well.

“What do you want?” he asks. “And why?”

She doesn’t smile, but her eyes are nowhere near the flat emptiness she adopts in the field. There’s an expression, instead, that he can’t name – triumph? Anger?

“I know what you need,” she says, “and I want to give it to you. Because you are the last line between Eren and death, and because I can.”

 

The third time they meet this way, she smacks him across face when he talks back, grinding his lip into the sharp edges of his teeth and drawing blood. After, she keeps him kneeling between her legs for an hour while he slowly licks into her. She’s flushed but firm, giving him soft praise when he earns it, pinching the back of his neck or his earlobe when he balks. She comes twice, building to a third when she pushes him away with one foot, pinning him onto his back. He shouldn’t want this from her, but he’s always been a slave, in some way, to his impulses. He has the control to choose the when, the how he will give in, but he can’t change the need itself.

Later, Erwin asks him about the fat lip, but Levi just shakes his head and doesn’t answer. He worries at it with his teeth.

 

They don’t talk, much. In the field she listens to his orders without a word of protest. She doesn’t look at him that way, challenging, not when there are lives on the line. He treats her the way he treats any other talented cadet – with disdain and grudging acceptance. In the field Levi doesn’t let himself become distracted, no matter his personal feelings. He deals with them when he has the time. He wouldn’t be alive otherwise.

Sometimes he looks at Mikasa and sees part of himself. The ability to sublimate emotion isn’t easily learned.

 

Levi doesn’t realize that she’s noticed until it’s been six months and neither of them are dead. He’s almost asleep by the time she shows up in his room, still wearing her muddy boots. It’s raining outside, and her hair is damp with it, her jacket splattered dark with raindrops. She knows how he feels about the dirt, but she doesn’t take off her shoes, just locks the door behind her and approaches the bed. He sleeps on top of the covers, always has, and so her hand around his bare ankle isn’t the surprise it could be.

“Do you know what I noticed?” she asks. The answer doesn’t matter. She’s more observant than most know. Almost as observant as Arlert, in her way.

He’s silent, resisting the urge to pull his ankle out of her grasp, and so it takes him a moment to realize that she does, in fact, want a response from him.

“What did you notice?” he says, and can’t keep the irritation out of his voice. She squeezes his ankle in warning, but he doesn’t listen to warnings. Not here. It’s not his nature to.

“All of the bedrooms in this castle have mirrors. Every one. Yours is the only one of them covered.”

If Levi were another person, this is where he’d flinch, or suck in a surprised breath. This is where he’d make a denial. He’s not another person, though. He’s only himself.

“You don’t look at your face in the windows as you pass. You don’t glance at your reflection in puddled water. Do you even remember what your own features look like?”

“Yes,” he says. “I remember.” He’s been naked for her, many times, but he’s never felt entirely vulnerable to her before.

Her hand slips away, and he pushes himself up before he’s consciously decided to. She’s crossing the room, approaching the covered mirror. He doesn’t care about the tracks her muddy boots are leaving on the floor anymore.

“Don’t,” he says. She has one hand on the sheet. She’s looking over her shoulder at him, and he has no idea what his expression looks like. She doesn’t let go. He watches her fingers curl in the sheet, and realizes what he has to do. “Maria,” he says. His voice is ragged on it, a little hoarse. He’s never had to safeword before, not with anyone, but trust Mikasa to find a real weak spot. He feels like he’s been cracked open, like she could look at him and see his lungs expand, the glistening viscera inside. The beat of his heart.

She lets go of the sheet. It ripples, but doesn’t fall. The air smells like rain, a breeze pushing in through the open window, and her brow is furrowed. He realizes how hard he’s breathing, and fights to stop. Her hand on the back of his neck is a surprise.

“Shh,” she says. “Quiet now.”

He wants to snap something harsh, something that will cut her, but he’s still breathing too hard to get the words out. She tightens her fingers on the back of his neck to the point of pain, and he closes his eyes. He can feel her climb onto the bed and settle behind him, her arms sliding around his waist. If she hugs him, he thinks that he’ll just leave – he wouldn’t be able to bear it – but instead she slides her hands underneath the soft fabric of his shirt and digs her fingernails into his skin. Eight tiny pinpricks of pain, hard enough to leave speckled bruises in curved half-moons.

“Hands and knees,” she says, mouth against his ear, and this is better, where he can’t see her face, and doesn’t have to think about what she’s learned about him.

She hits him until he’s moaning with it, short, abrupt noises punched out of him, and then she pushes him onto his back, riding him with one hand on the center of his chest, holding him down. She doesn’t let him come until she has.

It’s only after she leaves that he realizes she never took off her boots, and there’s mud smeared onto his sheets. He looks at the covered mirror, the contrast between her casual disrespect for his preferences, and her deferment to his weaknesses.

He stares out the window for a long moment, and then sits up, mindful of his bruises, and starts to strip the bed.

 

He thinks about it, after that. What it would take for him to let her pull the sheet off the mirror and make him look.

It isn’t that he hates his own face. He was the one that put that sheet there in the first place – he’s capable of seeing himself and not flinching. Watching himself getting fucked is something else entirely. He’s done that before, and to say it wasn’t pleasant would be an understatement.

On the whole, he doesn’t much like to think of how things were – the way he was – before Erwin found him and convinced him to join the Corps. The callous disregard not just for himself, but also for others. He was never going to be warm, no matter his upbringing, but the Corps gave his brutality, his speed and skill, his violence, an outlet. He has better things to do, now, than hurt and be hurt.

Still, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t _need_.

 

It takes more time – months – where they learn more about their enemies, and lose more soldiers anyway, where Levi’s initial refusal to replace his squad gets overruled, where Jaeger becomes less useless, and then more useless again. They expend too much manpower to learn too little, and there are times when hope isn’t enough. 

Mikasa hits him and fucks him and spreads him open beneath her, always at her own discretion. He doesn’t call the shots, and he doesn’t want to. It would void the purpose of the arrangement. During the weeks when they have no time, he thinks about her pushing three fingers into his mouth to make him shut up, about her lips on his cheek, then, when he’s swallowing around her stroking fingertips. It’s not enough, sometimes, but soldiers make do.

They’ve been idle for days, the Corps waiting for word from Military Police about further supply, and Levi is starting to itch underneath his skin. It’s summer, now, the heat settling down onto the camp in a thick, humid blanket. The air smells like cut grass and pollen, like exhaustion and always, always the faint tang of blood.

He’s standing at the window when Mikasa pushes the door open. He hears the door click locked, and turns to face her. She’s holding her jacket in one hand, strapped into her maneuver gear, examining him. Her expression is impassive, but not empty.

“Strip,” she says, and he does, because it’s been too long. He’s past where he’d usually tell her to make him. She has to know.

Taking off the gear is always an endeavor, but he is long practiced. She just watches from across the room until he’s barefoot and naked, hands at his sides. For another long moment, she just looks at him.

“Well?” he asks, almost a taunt. He wants her to slap him for it, but she doesn’t. She hangs her jacket on the doorknob and crosses the room, grabbing hold of his chin. He flexes his jaw, but doesn’t yank his head back.

“The mirror,” she says. “Will you use your safeword again?”

When she’s this close, it’s hard to lie. It’s hard to know what the truth is, either. She smells like leather and lavender and sweat.

“I don’t know,” he says, through gritted teeth. Her fingertips are pushing hard into his skin, and she is staring into his face. He wants to look away, and forces himself not to. “What are you going to do?”

“You’re not in charge, here,” she says, and kisses his forehead. He knows he’ll feel the press of her fingertips into his chin for days, and it’ll remind him of that kiss. “On the bed, on your hands and knees. And be patient.”

He goes. He thinks about her opening him up with her fingers, and it allows him not to think about the mirror for a moment. Then she crosses to it, and it’s all he can think about. He’s breathing too quickly, again, and her soft touch makes the sheet ripple. He’s hard, even now. He must be dripping precome onto the bedspread.

She looks at him, gives him a moment. He opens his mouth, almost says it, but he wants to know what she wants. He wants to know if she knows better than him what he needs. He closes his mouth and nods, and she pulls the sheet.

The first thing he notices is how flushed his face is, eyes half-lidded and sleepy, but his breath coming too fast. He sees the pale scoop of his chest, the welted calluses where the straps from the maneuver gear rub his skin, the mottled bruises. The hardness of his dick between his legs. He squeezes his eyes closed.

Her hand on the back of his neck is familiar. It starts there, rubs down between his shoulder blades, over his spine, stopping proprietarily at the curve of his ass. “What did you see?” she asks.

“Fragility,” he says. “Weakness.”

“Maybe,” she says, and her fingers leave his skin. “Be more specific. Tell me what you see.”

When she touches him again, her fingers are slippery, pushing between the cheeks of his ass, and he sucks in a choked breath. He forces his eyes open, and sees her behind him. She’s next to the bed, fully clothed while he’s naked, standing while he’s on his hands and knees, utterly composed while he’s panting, aroused and overwhelmed. The mirror doesn’t lie. It never has.

“The last time I did this I was nineteen,” he says, “with none of these calluses and fewer scars.” His voice is more even than he thought he’d be able to manage, and then she rubs a finger over his hole, nudging just the tip inside. He groans. “I – I’d never seen what I looked like when I was submitting before. I didn’t like it.”

This is something of an understatement – Levi had always been able to reconcile his need to submit with his need to control his submission, but he hadn’t seen any control, then. It had scared him, the way he could flay himself open for his partners, the way he relied on them. He may need to submit to feel centered, but he doesn’t have to like all the facets of himself. He doesn’t even have to like most of them.

Mikasa pushes her finger in a little further, then pulls it out. Levi can’t help the way his hips shift back.

“Levi,” she says, and it’s the first time she’s actually said his name aloud. He shudders. “What do you _see_?”

He’s been looking at her, because that‘s what he’d rather, but his eyes cut back to his own face. Pink nipples and wickedly curved scars. The flush creeping down his neck. Her hand spreading the cheeks of his ass.

“Myself, enjoying what you do to me,” he says. Her fingers are even slicker when they push against him this time, and she slides one all the way inside him. He pants, mouth slightly open, and he wonders if this is a reward. If she’s rewarding him.

“Yes,” she says. “What else?”

“How much I want it,” he says, like he’s chewing on glass. “How much I need it.”

“Yes,” she says, and pushes a second finger in beside the first. He makes a keening noise, sharp, and cuts it off as soon as he can manage. She rakes her fingernails down the side of his ribcage, and he watches her do it in the mirror, watches the way his whole body shudders, the way his hips move with the force of her fingers pushing into him. She isn’t gentle, even if her voice is soft. “Keep going.”

“I –“ He swallows another noise, her fingers crooking up and pressing inside him, sending lightning down his spine. “I don’t know,” he says.

The flat of her palm comes down swift and hard on his rib cage, then his ass and the flank of his thigh. She smacks him until his skin starts to turn red, until he’s leaning into it and pulling away at the same time, her fingers still fucking into him. He’s so close to coming, though she won’t let him yet.

“You can do better,” she says, and pets the hot skin her hand left behind. He’s never had anyone like her.

“That I’d let you do what you want,” he says, in a rush, “because you know what I need.”

She slides a third finger in with the other two, and he feels full, stretched open, the same way he feels like she’s peeled off every layer of his skin so she can look directly at the meat that makes him work. Like she’s sawed his brain open so she can dig around inside, probing with her tiny, sharp fingertips.

“Yes,” she says. “Good,” and she leans down to put her mouth on the side of his thigh, bites down hard where he’s already going to bruise, and sucks at the skin until he knows he’ll have a livid yellow and purple mark. She pushes her fingers in and up, hard, and digs her teeth into his skin, and he comes, just like that. He watches in the mirror, helpless, as his hips rock mindlessly back into her, as he comes onto his thighs and stomach and the comforter beneath him, as she meets his eyes, there, staring at him, and then that’s all he can see.

 

Later, he pushes two fingers and the tip of his tongue up into her, and she pulls his hair hard enough to hurt, holding him close to her. The balance has changed. She isn’t softer, but she’s less distant. He’s still messy, naked and covered in his own come, and the mirror is still uncovered. He can’t see much over the arch of her thigh, but she’s looking down at him with something like proprietary satisfaction. She’s flushed with arousal, but still in control. He’s letting her use his mouth, his hands, how she wants to.

She pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead before she goes, tells him to shower. He’s still never seen her completely naked.

 

She comes back from a raid with the remnants of a bloody nose, and just says, “Eren,” before she tells him to strip. He’ll find out the details from Erwin later, he supposes, but it doesn’t really matter. She can take him apart all he wants, but he only knows what she wants him to know about her.

She prefers being eaten out to anything else, he’s learned, so he does, going down on her until his face is smeared with her come, grinding his hips into the sheets. After, she pulls him over her lap, and rubs her knuckles hard into the bruises his last mission left on his back and ass. He swallows his whimpers until she starts to hit him – open-palmed smacks and closed-fisted blows. He pushes his cock against her leg, unsure which he likes more. He comes with a strangled groan, and she cups the back of his neck.

“You got me dirty,” she says. “Clean it up.”

He looks up at her face, and she touches his cheek, slides a hand into his hair and pushes his head down. He licks his come off of her thigh, and wonders if it’s supposed to be humiliating. It’s not.

“Why did you agree to this?” she asks, and rubs two fingers over the vertebrae at the top of his spine. He shudders. It’s the first question she’s asked that she doesn’t already know the answer to.

He thinks about it, swallowing the taste of his own come. “Because you hate me, and that meant you wouldn’t coddle me. Because you respect me as a soldier, so you wouldn’t abuse me. Because it’s better for your brother if I’m in tip-top shape.” He pauses, and she idly pushes her fingers into one of the bruises on his shoulder blades. “Because I thought you’d be good at it.”

“Hm.” When he’s finished cleaning her up, he lies his head on her thigh, tacky saliva against his cheek, and lets her prod at his back. “I don’t hate you,” she says. “Much.”

He thinks about that. Looks up at the blood still dried around the rim of her nostrils. She looks serene. He wonders if she stopped anywhere else, before she came here. He wonders if she might even need him, a little.

She pushes her fingers into his hair and twists, just enough to sting. He puts his head back down onto her thigh, and lets her skin warm his cheek.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Baby, I Think That's Gonna Bruise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180602) by [ZoeBug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug)




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